If there are two things I despise on this earth, it is ignorant prejudice and idle gossip. Both of them, in my mind, are the devil’s volleyball.
With both, they can be turned on you just as easily as they are dished out. You might get your serve off, but if you are going to play you darn well better be prepared for the return when it comes. And don’t be fooled — just about any of us can be crushed by that return if it is delivered by the right person.
The sad thing is, regardless of how we supposedly have been brought up to be better than such, it seems too many just can’t help but gossip. And to be sure, we are overrun with them.
They live their lives to get in front of someone else and “they said this, and then I said that, and then they said...” or “did you hear about so and so?” or “well, I heard...” to fulfill some sort of odd need for internal verification that their lives are thankfully and mercifully better than the person or persons in question.
I overheard a conversation from a lady quick to judge a family she actually claimed as friends because they were having some financial troubles. She was “shocked” and “just couldn’t believe” how they had been seen around town eating in restaurants when “everyone knew” they “couldn’t even pay their bills.”
What she didn’t know was that the restaurants in question had offered meals to the family through their church, and friends had simply given them gift cards so they could go relax and have a nice meal as a family.
She went on to comment on how “funny” the family dressed and the “pitiful” manners of their children.
I found it odd that all this was emanating from a woman labeled a tramp by some. Just a few years ago, she had gone through a nasty divorce which saw her left in need of external help from folks in the community (which she gladly took). She’d been in a rumored affair while she was married, and her own daughter supposedly had a child out of wedlock a few years ago in another “scandal.”
Is any of it true? I have no idea, nor do I care. I happen to know the gossipees and gossiper in question, and I happen to like all of them.
Are either perfect? Is anyone? I like them for what they are in my life, and couldn’t care less about all the supposed dirt. We all have dirt. We’ve all got strengths and we’ve all got weaknesses. I do my best to try to focus on the strengths.
Really, we probably don’t want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about most folks. I prefer to try to give people the benefit of the doubt that in the end they are probably a lot like me and everyone else. In other words, they’re imperfect, too.
If you are a gossip, of course, I am sure your glass house is 100 percent unbreakable and foolproof, right? You better consider the fools around you before you assume as much. As Will Rogers once stated, “the only time people dislike gossip is when the gossip is about them.”
The same is sadly true when something bad happens. It is just too simple for something to happen and it be exactly as it appears. Oh no, the gossip will say, there must be more to the story than that (especially behind the shroud of social media). An accident can’t be an accident without some kind of circumstance that makes for great gossip, especially when a gossip is retelling the story.
We Americans have allowed Jerry Springer to become our moral compass. The crazier the story and the circumstances behind it the better, and the more embellishment the better, too — even if most of it is based on something heard from someone’s best friend’s aunt we’ve heard about online.
And, too many want to focus on and exploit what they see as the blatant flaws that exist in those “lesser” people so we can somehow raise ourselves to a place to look down on them in their own minds. I mean, sure, we know have some things that are not exactly sterling in our own lives, but at least they (and we) aren’t THAT bad — right?
Wrong. Judging others is only a matter of convenient perception when it comes to a gossip becoming the judge and jury in defaming someone else. Consider, if you can, your own weaknesses and dark spots before you engage your vocal cords literally and/or virtually in bringing someone else down for your own self-aggrandizement.
Basically, if we all would live in such a way that none of us would be ashamed to sell our pet parrot to the worst town gossip, life around here would be even better than it already is — and lest we forget, it already is pretty dang good.
Put another way: “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body... Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” - Ephesians 4:25,29
To translate: if you can’t say something good about somebody, just keep quiet. Please?
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